When you have this many clematis blooming at the same time, you know that you’re garden isn’t a baby garden anymore. It has taken several years for these plants to get established in both the east and west garden.

I’ve been weeding and carting loads of chicken dirt (top soil and chicken manure) and rolling and raking and hoeing too, for the last couple of weeks, with my feet and hands and my wheel barrow. When Mister Mims showed up yesterday with the golf course gardeners cart, well, I was all smiles.

Bearded iris leaves, lambs ear and thyme have been thriving beneath a layer of leaves.

Today I spent a couple hours raking up leaves that I had left spread out over my kitchen garden for the winter. The area is partly sunny but mostly shady in the summer time. There was bright green ground cover underneath all those dry brown leaves, and lambs ear too, and bearded iris leaves emerging from the ground. I have a little rake that I use to clear my garden where I know I have delicate plants growing. Mr. Mims planted some Jacob’s Ladder in the same area, and I picked carefully around the area where I have a little ring of stones to mark the spot. It was a nice surprise to see the plant emerge again, and the pretty purple flowers getting ready to bloom.

When I shot this video there was wind, and crows calling, and an airplane flying overhead that sounds a little like a Jimi Hendrix slide accompanying the nearby wind chimes while the flowers do their dance…

Count me among the millions who can’t resist the sight of a beautiful flower. Food comes from flowers, reason enough to love them. It is no superficial relationship that we have with these beauties. But beauty helps doesn’t it? Food for the eyes is nourishment for the Soul.

Yellow Jasmine Flowers

The speed of spring is overwhelming. One day the trees still look grey and drab. The next day there are hints of red and yellow and green. Then all of a sudden the trees are blocking my view of the neighbors, dogwoods are blooming, and I didn’t, or couldn’t, observe it all happening. Buds and shoots appear all around. Patches of grass go from brown to green. Asparagus and stevia and mint reappear like magic from the ground. It’s almost impossible to keep track of, but the flowers really steel the show, tantalizing us with the hope, (never really a promise,) of cherries and strawberries, blueberries, nectarines and artichokes. Continue reading →